Truro Anglican Church is an Anglican church in Fairfax, Virginia, USA. Founded in the eighteenth century, the parish has played a significant role in the Anglican tradition in Northern Virginia. In 2006, the congregation voted to depart from The Episcopal Church amid longstanding theological and doctrinal disputes, including disagreements over the authority of Scripture, core Christian doctrines, and matters of church governance.
In 1991, the Rev. Martyn Minns was installed as rector of Truro Church. He emphasized an evangelical call to worldwide mission and outreach to the poor, as well as biblical theology. Under his leadership the Lamb Center was established, offering social services, prayer, and practical encouragement to the homeless in Fairfax, and the work of TIPS Truro's International Programs and Services was expanded. A new mission church, Christ the Redeemer Church, was launched in western Fairfax County with the Rev. Tom Herrick as vicar in 1994. Most recently, Truro birthed another mission church in Loudoun County, the Church of the Holy Spirit in 2001, with the Rev. Clancy Nixon as vicar. The Rev. Martyn Minns was made an honorary canon of All Saints' Cathedral, Mpwapwa, Tanzania in 2002; he was consecrated as a bishop by Archbishop Peter Akinola in 2006.
21st century
Following the Protocol for Departing Congregations created by the Diocese of Virginia, Truro Church embarked on 40 Days of Discernment to consider its future in the Episcopal Church (TEC). This time of discernment led to a parish vote where the entire membership voted on whether to leave the Episcopal Church because of the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church. On Sunday, December 17, 2006, 92 percent of the individual members of Truro Episcopal Church membership voted to withdraw from the Episcopal Church and join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a mission initiative of the Anglican Church of Nigeria (a province in the worldwide Anglican Communion), but an entity that is not a branch of the Episcopal Church, under the leadership of the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, Missionary Bishop of CANA. Joining Truro were other individuals from eleven other parishes in the Diocese of Virginia who also voted to leave the Episcopal Church and join CANA. CANA is a member of the Common Cause Partnership, which also includes the American Anglican Council, the Anglican Coalition in Canada, the Anglican Communion Network, the Anglican Essentials Canada, the Anglican Mission in America, the Anglican Network in Canada, the Anglican Province of America, Forward in Faith North America. and the Reformed Episcopal Church.
In 2007, the Rev. Tory Baucum became the new rector of Truro. In June of the following year, Truro was represented at the Global Anglican Future in Jerusalem. The leaving members of Truro initiated the first legal proceedings under a Virginia "departure" statute. Thereafter, TEC initiated legal proceedings in Virginia to determine the ownership of the facilities. Initially a Virginia Circuit Court judge agreed with CANA regarding technical points about whether the TEC was qualified to bring the action, and the case of real property ownership was not decided. TEC appealed, and on June 10, 2010, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the decision of the circuit court, specifically finding that the Virginia statute on which the departing members relied did not apply because the departing members had not joined a "branch" of the same denomination.
In the midst of the proceedings on December 31, 2010, two of Truro's employees, including Truro's associate rector for pastoral care, the Rev. Marshall Brown, were fired from the church for repeatedly using church computers to access internet pornography. Bishop Martyn Minns, who knew Brown since they had attended seminary together in the 1970s, told The Washington Post that the church had arranged for Brown to receive treatment for an unspecified internet addiction in 2005, when Minns was Truro's rector. Truro's executive director told the Post that Brown was fired for accessing sites "that would be considered" pornography and that a subsequent IT sweep revealed a second computer with "a significant amount of pornography", leading to the second employee's termination. Afterward, the Fairfax County Police Department took possession of the computer and opened an investigation.
In 2012, the Circuit Court of Fairfax County decided the suit on remand, in combination with several other Northern Virginia TEC property splitting actions. Applying the neutral principles of law doctrine, the court upheld TEC's Constitution and Canons and ordered that CANA and the trustees of the withdrawn churches "promptly relinquish control over the properties to the [TEC] Diocese." Subsequently, an "unexpected" friendship between Rev. Tory Baucum of Truro Church and the Rev. Shannon Johnston, Bishop of the Diocese of Virginia, resulted in a situation in 2014 where "...the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and Truro Church have settled their litigation and forged an amicable truce. However, Baucum's efforts were criticized by top ACNA leaders such as Archbishop Foley Beach, who wrote that Baucum's decision to reconcile with Johnston was "not in harmony with the Bible’s instruction in dealing with false teachers." The Rev. Jaime Brown, who was Truro's Director of Worship since 2014, became rector of Truro in September 2022.